Frosty
SOH-CM-2025
There is this notion that one should try to learn a new thing every day:
I came across a original (slightly post, but dating back to, WW2) document showing the type of numerals and letters manufacturers were supposed to use on aircraft instrument dials. Until now I had used a modern font that came somewhat close but was not exactly what it was supposed to be. I wondered whether it was possible to turn this into a font, so I could use it when drawing my instrument dials. So the last two-three days I immersed myself into the wonderful world of typography and font design. I found a site which showed the steps how to create a font and what programs were helpful. In the end I cut the letters from the document, saved them in .bmp format, openend them in Font Forge as a glyph background, used the autotrace function, and after some fiddling with the spacing, exported the result as a .ttf file.
As I use this only in Photoshop for instrument dial design, there is just capital A to Z and numerals 0 to 9. I did add a period, colon, forward slash and space glyphs but no fancy other stuff that a proper designer would need to do. I might add a comma in the future so I can also use it for decalcomania texts which might have used this type. But if you need it to create your own instruments or would like to have a go at font creation yourself, here it is:
I came across a original (slightly post, but dating back to, WW2) document showing the type of numerals and letters manufacturers were supposed to use on aircraft instrument dials. Until now I had used a modern font that came somewhat close but was not exactly what it was supposed to be. I wondered whether it was possible to turn this into a font, so I could use it when drawing my instrument dials. So the last two-three days I immersed myself into the wonderful world of typography and font design. I found a site which showed the steps how to create a font and what programs were helpful. In the end I cut the letters from the document, saved them in .bmp format, openend them in Font Forge as a glyph background, used the autotrace function, and after some fiddling with the spacing, exported the result as a .ttf file.
As I use this only in Photoshop for instrument dial design, there is just capital A to Z and numerals 0 to 9. I did add a period, colon, forward slash and space glyphs but no fancy other stuff that a proper designer would need to do. I might add a comma in the future so I can also use it for decalcomania texts which might have used this type. But if you need it to create your own instruments or would like to have a go at font creation yourself, here it is:
